Malys, the demon-exorcising roguelike deckbuilder from Summerfall Studios, has left early access and landed at 1.0 on Steam today, priced at $14.99. It grafts a grim, noir city onto card-based combat and leans hard into theatrical demon encounters and worldbuilding courtesy of David Gaider.
The setup is brief and deliciously bleak. You play Noah, a priest-turned-demon-hunter, threading through a monochrome city to track a single, wily target named Malys. Along the way, hosts – ordinary people – are possessed, and fights play out like small courtroom dramas where your cards are both evidence and ammunition. The resource economy is unusual: instead of mana, you pay by burning cards from your hand, which turns every choice into a compact act of sacrifice. That mechanic forces constant tradeoffs about what to keep for later and what to toss to trigger an effect now.
Combat presentation is deliberately theatrical. Victims are strapped to chairs while the demon swells behind them in lurid color, and the game stages fights across multiple beats. Lesser foes are dangerous but readable. Greater demons begin the fight obscured, hiding their form and intent until you force them to show themselves, then they hit you with full, escalating patterns. When an enemy weakens a final desperation phase can pull on the host’s life force, turning what looked like a win into a tense scramble to keep the victim alive. Lose the host or Noah’s will breaks, and the run ends.
The tone and art direction are what help Malys carve out an identity. The palette and framing lean into noir and grotesque imagery rather than bright fantasy, which makes the demon reveals pop. If the mechanics remind you of other deckbuilders, that’s fair. Still, the way the game ties the roguelike loop to the setting – characters who remember repeated nights and a running narrative thread about a single demonic antagonist – gives each run a compact narrative weight. Summerfall leaned on David Gaider for worldbuilding, and his fingerprints are visible in the writing and setup. For a deeper look at how Malys began and why the team chose this direction, see the David Gaider interview on the site.
If you want to pick it up, the Steam store page is the place to go, and at this price, it feels like a reasonable gamble for players who like card games with hard choices and a dark mood. For a roundup of other small-team roguelikes on PC, our write-up on Desktop Survivors 98 is a handy follow-up. There are a few rough edges. Some runs can feel swingy when the deck economy and the demon phases align poorly, and balance will probably evolve post‑launch. Still, for players who enjoy tight, thematic design and a card game that asks you to sacrifice to survive, Malys is worth a look.
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